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Blackbeard may get all the attention. Black Bart was even more feared. But for my money, the most important pirate to cast a shadow across Hampton Roads was an almost completely unknown Englishman named William Dampier. Exactly what he was doing in the bustling port town of Hampton in the early 1680s isn't well understood. No one knows how or why he got here. But with Hampton's prime location off the northernmost reaches of the Gulf Stream and its proximity to the transatlantic trade winds, there's been plenty of speculation that, like many other enterprising brigands from as far away as the West Indies, he sailed to Virginia to take advantage of the many opportunities to...

Related "Charles Darwin" Articles

Blackbeard may get all the attention. Black Bart was even more feared. But for my money, the most important pirate to cast a shadow across Hampton Roads was an almost completely unknown Englishman named William Dampier.
Exactly what he was doing in the...

Summer might be more than half over, but there's still plenty of time to dig into some good "beach reads," whether you're sitting on the sands at Buckroe or lounging on your back porch. Here are a few that made their way to my desk in the past...

Few universities can look back on a history so venerable as the College of William and Mary. Chartered by royal decree in 1693, America's second oldest college soon became home to its first law school — and it educated so many Founding Fathers that...

Cavorting in the ocean with sociable seals is a stirring experience, and because of this, I don't know a traveler who doesn't have the Galápagos on his or her bucket list. Even though Charles Darwin's living laboratory is 600 miles from the nearest...

Using some plain old rubber strips, scientists have created a whole new shape -- a hemihelix, a long spiral that switches twisting directions over its length. The shape, described in the journal PLOS One, is rarely seen in nature – and could potentially...

"The Galapagos: A Natural History"
Basic Books, $27.99
The 13 islands that make up the Galapagos archipelago lie off the west coast of South America. Author Henry Nicholls, an ambassador for the Galapagos Conservation Trust and the editor of...

For nature lovers it is paradise: Ecuador's Archipiélago de Colón, islands better known as the Galapagos. Located in the proverbial "middle of nowhere" in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles from the coast of Ecuador, these remote islands...

How to enumerate the myriad wonders and delights of “Totem,” now taking its viewers on a dazzling trek from the primordial to the cosmic?
For starters, there’s Cirque du Soleil’s signature yellow-and-blue Grand Chapiteau, rising from the Port of Los...

Why do our eyes open wide when we feel fear or narrow to slits when we express disgust? According to new research, it has to do with survival.
In a paper published Thursday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers concluded that expressions of...

When it comes to evolutionary debates, this one is a major dogfight.
Since the time of Charles Darwin, scientists have argued over the origin of domesticated dogs, speculating wildly about how, when and where a toothy, flesh-eating beast was first...

Thursday was a true dog day afternoon, as scientists announced they had — perhaps — finally solved the riddle of the origin of domesticated dogs.
As my colleague Monte Morin reported: “Dogs evolved from a now extinct species of European wolf that...

One hundred years from now, when auto historians go all Charles Darwin dissecting the evolution of Porsche's 911 sports car, they may notice a bit of a dogleg in the year 2012.
The car's progress since its inception in 1963 has been carefully...

Three quarters of the world's surface is water, but nearly all of our vacations are based on land. It stands to reason that we must be missing out.
Luckily there are some fantastic ways to see the wet face of the planet.
1. Explore the pristine...

LONDON - The exterior of Westminster Abbey is imposing and grandiose.
Our plan was simple: Pay the admission, stick our heads inside to see what it looked like, and then quickly duck out and move on to a museum.
The museum never happened.
That...

CAMBRIDGE (Reuters) - Got 48 hours to explore the colleges, pubs, green spaces and leafy towpaths of Cambridge, England? Reuters correspondents with local knowledge help visitors get the most out of a visit to the city that is home to one of world's...

Can our facial expressions affect our mood and have an impact on those around us? According to Dr. Eric Finzi, author of the book "The Face of Emotion," they certainly can.
Finzi, a dermatological surgeon who spent nearly two decades...

I've often fantasized about retracing the steps of such naturalists as Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt and William Bartram, who saw exotic places and recorded, in detail, the plants and animals they described so vividly on their expeditions.
...

One thing above all draws the curious, the adventurous and those who love nature to these rough-hewn volcanic islands 600 miles west of Ecuador: the animals.
They swim. They fly. They lounge. They lumber. Sometimes, they do more. Naturalist Klaus Fielsch...

Charles Darwin might have found an interesting research subject in the Burke family's Goleta home, which has evolved over the last 47 years as the family has changed.
Chuck and Harriet Burke purchased the five-bedroom tract house in 1962 as a place...